Inspired by Children of the Forge of @robininthelabyrinth
“The supposed ‘pregnancy glow’ refers to minute shifts in the body’s internal composition that increases production of oil and blood, increasing floridity,” Wen Qing said tartly. “It does not typically refer to actual glowing.”
“Oh, that,” Nie Mingjue said, once again disinterested. “That’s just my golden core. It’s not related to the pregnancy. Now, as I was saying –”
When Jiang Chen was little, she told her mother that she wanted to be like her when she grew up.
Madame Yu thought it referred to her cultivation and was very proud, even smug, but actually Jiang Cheng had been eyeing her beautiful skirts and delicate jewelry, her proud back and gentle curves.
It wasn’t until Jiang Cheng was a little older that she realized that she couldn’t be like her mother – that she was supposed to be like her father. Because she was her father’s son, and not his daughter.
She was never going to be like her father.
It was both a relief and a terrible heartache when Wei Wuxian joined the household – he was everything her father had ever wanted in a son. Jiang Cheng’s competitive streak was spurred on for a little while, trying to show that she could be just as good a son as Wei Wuxian, but she failed, and failed, and failed some more, and in the end she realized she really wasn’t.
She wasn’t as good a cultivator, she wasn’t as good a leader, she wasn’t as good a person.
She certainly wasn’t as good a son.
(She wasn’t a son at all, but who was she going to tell? Who would ever believe her?)
-
She thought for a while that she might be a cutsleeve – it was said that men who liked other men were feminine in behavior and in their thoughts, a result of their being lacking in yang and overabundant in yin – but the pornography she got Wei Wuxian to get for her, after she’d egged him on to do it under the guise of a dare, ended up leaving her cold and more than a little bored.
(It’d been Wei Wuxian who’d ended up staring at it for hours and hours, mouth slightly agape, before slinking away with hunched shoulders and look on his face; she assumed that was the normal reaction to pornography, for boys who weren’t defective the way she was, and sighed again over her own failures.)
At any rate, the first time her heart had ever been moved, it ended up being for a woman after all: Wen Qing in her red dress and her head held high, proud and a little above-it-all, carrying a sword like any man and needles in her fist like the doctor she was.
It had been a relief to think that she might be normal in some ways, some obvious ways, that she might be a boy in the ways that mattered, like love.
She even bought a comb for her, wondering if it would be rude to hand it over – presumptuous, maybe. Wen Qing was a Wen, after all, even if she didn’t seem to think she was the sun in the sky the way the other Wens did…it probably wouldn’t work out.
Jiang Cheng put the comb away.
They had an encounter in an inn later, faces suddenly an inch apart so that Wen Qing can whisper words of warning, and Jiang Cheng expected her heart to speed up when it happens – it did, a little, but not as much as it had before.
It occurred to Jiang Cheng that she wasn’t sure if her heart had been moved because she liked Wen Qing or if it was only that she wanted to be her.
Jiang Cheng almost asked, the next time they met – Wen Qing was a doctor, wasn’t she, so surely she’d have some sort of insight – but after a few moments realized that it would be unbelievably rude to dump issues of sexuality and attraction onto Wen Qing’s shoulders at a moment when they were surrounded by the ghost puppets of Wen Qing’s family who were trying to kill them.
Plus, Nie Huaisang was there. That would have made everything even more awkward.
So she didn’t ask, said “Never mind” when Wen Qing asked what she had been going to say, and ignored the thoughtful look on Nie Huaisang’s face – he was probably just thinking that Jiang Cheng had a crush.
Wen Qing probably thought she just had a crush.
It would be easier if it was just a crush.
-
It turned out that Jiang Cheng had underestimated Nie Huaisang, and also she might be a little in love with Qinghe – her father had always said they were a bit odd, in a tone that didn’t quite suggest approval, but it turned out they were just the right kind of odd for Jiang Cheng.
“Are you a girl?” Nie Huaisang asked, idly fanning himself – Wei Wuxian had wandered outside with his jar of liquor after the feast, and Lan Wangji was nowhere to be found, very likely already leaving.
“What?” Jiang Cheng said, then turned to glare incredulously at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve walked into our rooms in the Cloud Recesses without knocking often enough to know the answer to that.”
“Not on the outside,” Nie Huaisang said, rolling his eyes. “On the inside. Are you a girl when you think?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jiang Cheng asked, suspicious, and her heart was racing faster than it ever had around Wen Qing – mostly in terror.
Nie Huaisang heaved a sigh as if Jiang Cheng was being especially stupid. “Misaligned reincarnations,” he said. “Two births, one man and one woman, happening at the same hour, same minute, same second – except the man’s soul gets lost and goes into the woman’s body, and the woman’s goes into the man’s. Think of it as a filing error by the heavenly bureaucracy.”
Jiang Cheng had never heard anything so stupid and wonderful before in her life.
“You’re joking,” she said, accusing. “There’s no such thing.”
“There is! I swear! It’s not uncommon in Qinghe – we have at least a dozen misaligned reincarnations in the Nie sect right now.”
Jiang Cheng crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t believe you. Name one.”
“My older brother,” Nie Huaisang said promptly. “I swear that’s why he’s so pleased over that stupid mustache of his; it’s a sign of how good his cultivation is, putting all that yang energy in the right place.”
Jiang Cheng blinked, not quite understanding. “Why would he be pleased about having a mustache if his soul was actually a woman’s?”
Certain Jiang Cheng went to extraordinary lengths to keep her own chin clean-shaven. The thought of having a beard repulsed her.
“What? No. His soul is a man’s.”
“But you said he was misaligned…?”
“He is. What, do you want me to ask you to look inside his robes to see what he doesn’t have between his legs?”
Jiang Cheng gaped. “But he – he dresses as man!”
“He is a man,” Nie Huaisang said. “He just happens to be a man who, if you’re talking physically, would be the one to bear children, not the one to sire them.”
Jiang Cheng felt the need to sit down. It was as if her entire world had changed to spin the other way around.
“I’d really like him to marry Meng Yao,” Nie Huaisang said thoughtfully. “He likes him so much – he really respects him and listens to him, and my da-ge doesn’t listen to anyone. And that way I could have some nieces or nephews! But maybe he’ll decide to marry a woman instead, and then they’d have to find someone else to sire the children. Maybe Lan Xichen; he seems like the sort of person who’d agree to donate without demanding a share of filial piety…”
“I am,” Jiang Cheng said quickly, forcing the words out of her mouth before she became too shy to say them. “Your – question. From earlier. I am.”
Nie Huaisang smiled brilliantly. “I thought you might be,” he said. “Would you like to spend the evening trying on some of my mother’s old dresses? She had your shoulders – da-ge’s biological mother, you understand. Very tall. I’m sure we could find something in purple…”
Maybe it was bravery inspired by the liquor they’d all drunk at dinner, but Jiang Cheng agreed.
It was a good night.
-
It was something she thought about a lot, later, when they were stuck in the camp with the Wens, and after, when they’re back at home again.
Wei Wuxian’s words, reassuring her that she would be Sect Leader no matter how unorthodox – his reminder that Lan Yi was Sect Leader Lan, and just as valued as any other despite being who and what she was – made Jiang Cheng wonder if Wei Wuxian somehow knew.
She hoped he did.
After that, though, she didn’t – there wasn’t time to think about anything as stupid as identity.
Not for a long time.
-
Everything after Wei Wuxian came back was a disaster, every last bit of it.
Wei Wuxian was different, cold and unfeeling; Jiang Cheng tried to reach him, over and over again, but nothing seemed to work. She even wondered, in a panic, if Wei Wuxian hadn’t known, and maybe had somehow found out – he certainly seemed to be avoiding her in specific.
She didn’t know what else it could be.
Everything was falling apart around her – her older sister was remaining at Koi Tower, her shixiong had turned from mere negligence to outright rebellion…
She followed him to the Burial Mounds.
“You should disown me,” Wei Wuxian said. His face was cold.
It had always been cold, ever since he’d disappeared – they’d been with the Wens then, too.
“Fuck that,” Jiang Cheng said, and just gave up, sitting down on the ground. “No. Fuck you.”
Wei Wuxian scowled at him. “Don’t be so indecisive, Jiang Cheng; it doesn’t suit you. Disown me as a rebel, and the shame of my actions won’t be reflected onto the Jiang sect.”
“The shame of my actions,” Jiang Cheng said mockingly. “Don’t call it a shame if you don’t think it is one, Wei Wuxian! You’re proud of what you’ve done. I suppose in the end it’s a good thing my father didn’t have a son like you!”
“Oh, that old thing again,” Wei Wuxian said, his face twisting. “I’m telling you, you’re his son –”
“I’m not,” Jiang Cheng snapped back, pushed beyond her limits. “I was never his son; you were the only son he ever had, no matter how little blood there was between you. You keep pushing this, Wei Wuxian, and I never want to see or hear of you kneeling before his memorial tablet ever again, you hear me?! Neither as son, nor nephew, nor disciple!”
It was a low blow, she knew, but she didn’t know how else to reach him. Even if Wei Wuxian, the new Wei Wuxian, didn’t love her as much as he loved the Wens, then surely – surely he loved Jiang Fengmian enough?
Or had all her father’s love been pissed away into nothing?
Wei Wuxian stared at her, his brows pulled together, and promptly fixated on the wrong thing entirely. “What do you mean you’re not his son? Madame Yu would never –”
Jiang Cheng jabbed a finger at him. “Do not accuse my mother of adultery!”
“I wasn’t going to!” Wei Wuxian protested, and then looked around almost as if he though she was going to overhear him and order him to go kneel.
It was so familiar a gesture that Jiang Cheng let slip a hysterical giggle, which somehow set Wei Wuxian off laughing, and then that set Jiang Cheng off in turn.
“This is so stupid,” Jiang Cheng moaned, her hands over her face to hide her tears. “No one even said anything funny…you don’t make any sense, Wei Wuxian.”
“I don’t make any sense?” Wei Wuxian was hiccupping. “You don’t make any sense. What was that about not being Jiang Fengmian’s son?”
At this point, Jiang Cheng couldn’t see any path forward that didn’t involve banishing Wei Wuxian from the sect, to never see him again except as strangers – or at least to only ever see him in secret. They’d already grown so distant…there was no point in holding anything back.
So she told him, borrowing Nie Huaisang’s words to explain the concept.
“I didn’t know,” Wei Wuxian said, wiping his eyes. “I really didn’t. I didn’t even know enough to guess.”
Jiang Cheng sniffed and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and putting her chin on her knees – disgracefully childish, really, but she felt that way right now. She felt hollowed out, as if telling Wei Wuxian her greatest secret had left her with nothing else inside.
“You’re the one who can’t be guessed,” she said bitterly. “I don’t understand you, Wei Wuxian. You said you’d be at my side, that you’d help me, but you’re picking these people over me without a second thought…did I do something wrong?”
“What? No!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “No, that isn’t – it isn’t – it isn’t about you at all.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me to help you with them?” Jiang Cheng asked. She’d wondered that for a long time. “It’s not like you were the only one Wen Qing helped back then, when we were running from the Wen sect! She hid me, too! If that’s the debt you want to repay, shouldn’t I have every right to repay it, too? But you never told me you were going…”
“You couldn’t have come! What it would have done to the Jiang sect’s relationship with the Jin sect –”
“Oh, now you give a fig for politics? I’m Sect Leader! Those guards that you say fought you; they would have had to listen to me – if they challenged me, the scandal would be about their conduct, not mine! I could have helped, I could have explained it, we could have figured out a way to do it together…no,” she said, suddenly certain. “I’m not kicking you out the Jiang sect. You’re the only man we have left in the family, Wei Wuxian; you can’t just run out on me now. Especially given that jiejie’s leaving, too.”
Wei Wuxian jerked as if he’d been stabbed. “What do you mean, shijie’s leaving?”
“She’s going to accept Jin Zixuan’s offer of marriage,” Jiang Cheng said, and had Wei Wuxian really not known? Had he paid any attention to anything related to the Jiang sect in the past few weeks? “Maybe not yet, but…soon. And then I’ll be alone in the Lotus Pier, trying to run the entire damn sect without any help at all – no, I’m not kicking you out. I refuse.”
She’d been willing to agree, even a few short moments earlier. But then they’d taken the time to sit and talk about other things – she’d taken the time to make sure Wei Wuxian knew who she really was, to bare herself to him, no matter how stupid it might feel to be concerned about her self-perception when put in comparison with the destruction of her entire family – and the pause had given her time to think it over again.
It had made her realize that she didn’t want to give up on Wei Wuxian, even if he was giving up on her.
“Aren’t we a Great Sect, after all?” she said, scowling, gathering her strength of will. If she was going to need to stand up against the rest of the cultivation world, Wei Wuxian included, to keep her family together, then so be it; she would do it if she had to. It was better than the alternative. “Sect Leader Jin is always making noises about being able to show strength – fine, then, we’ll show him strength! You have the Yin Tiger Seal, I have my forces, and jiejie – maybe jiejie can convince Jin Zixuan to help us –”
“Lan Zhan let us go,” Wei Wuxian said abruptly, and Jiang Cheng turned to him in surprise. “He encountered us on the Qiongqi Path; I told him to fight me if he wanted to stop me, and he didn’t. He let me go – he let all of us go.”
“So maybe he’ll help us again, if we asked?” Jiang Cheng hazarded a guess. “That’s good! And we’re old friends with Nie Huaisang, and we worked with Nie Mingjue during the war – the Nies are very upright, very straightforward. If we showed them that most of the people here are non-combatants, showed them everything…well, everything but what you’re doing with Wen Ning, anyway; what are you doing with Wen Ning? He’s not really a ghost puppet you’ve brought back from the dead, is he?”
“He’s not dead,” Wei Wuxian said. “Just very close to it. He’s been infected with resentful energy and his qi circulation has been thrown out of alignment with…it’s complicated, and I don’t think you care.”
“I don’t,” Jiang Cheng admitted. “But that’s fine. You talking about it like an academic is better than you talking like you’re about to raise armies of corpses to send against the rest of the cultivation world…anyway, start packing up your things. I left my people at the bottom of the mountain; I’ll go get them, they can help carry both things and people, and we’ll move you all back to the Lotus Pier.”
“Back to the Lotus Pier,” Wei Wuxian murmured, looking dazed.
“Yes, back to the Lotus Pier! Possession is nine-tenths the law,” Jiang Cheng said, thinking out loud. “If necessary, I’ll throw a fit and claim that Sect Leader Jin wants to invade the Lotus Pier the way the Wen sect did. He’ll never forgive me for it, and things might be a bit tricky for a while…he’ll probably say I’m too emotional to be sect leader. With your backing, though, I think we should be able to get through it.”
an au, if you're interested: the Wen Sect annex Qinghe Nie shortly after the Sect Leader's death, and young NMJ and NHS are raised as Qishan Sect cultivators, with all of Wen Ruohan's "gentle encouragement" to ensure it happens. What does the Sunshot Campaign look like, with the Wen wielding the force of Qinghe Nie as?
Nie Huaisang liked to braid his brother’s hair.
Proper Nie braids, the way it should be, no matter where they were or what happened to them – it’s very calming to him, and he liked to think his brother enjoyed it, too. He’d certainly fought hard enough for the privilege.
Wen Ruohan wasn’t very big on privileges, though he made certain exceptions for Nie Mingjue. Outside of formal events, which were an exercise in control and humiliation, Nie Huaisang’s brother could dress as he liked, provided he stayed within the boundaries of the Wen sect colors of white and red; the remaining details were left to his own discretion.
Since then, Nie Mingjue mostly wore white.
Not pretty white with embroidery, the way the Lan sect did, and definitely nothing with the red sun; just sheer unrelieved white.
Funeral clothing.
Nie Huaisang wasn’t sure if it was meant to mourn their father, who’d died so long ago now – Nie Huaisang was too young to remember much about him – or if Nie Mingjue was merely mourning everything that had happened since then. The loss of their sect, of their identities, of…
Nie Huaisang’s hands slowed, and then paused.
After a moment, Nie Mingjue stirred. “Huaisang? Is something the matter?”
“Would it be easier,” Nie Huaisang said, “if you were married?”
He could feel the way Nie Mingjue’s shoulders tensed under his hands.
“I’m not going to marry Wen Ruohan,” his brother said after a moment, his voice harsh. “He killed our father, stole our birthright, and imprisoned us here. I’m not going to marry him.”
“Wen Chao said that he’d probably make you Madame Wen, if you agreed,” Nie Huaisang said. “You wouldn’t have to kill people for him, if you agreed.”
Nie Mingjue was the Wen sect’s saber. He trained the Wen cultivators and led them in battle; wherever Wen Ruohan pointed, he went, and where he went, people rarely survived. That was the deal Nie Mingjue had struck, years ago, when the Wen sect had invaded Qinghe the very day after their father was murdered – a premeditated two-pronged attack, designed to eliminate all obstacles.
Nie Huaisang didn’t remember much from that day. They had been weak, defenseless, vulnerable – the food at dinner had been poisoned, spies from within turning on them. He himself had been one of the most sick, unable to stop himself from constantly vomiting, his veins turning blue as the poison spread through his young body; without the antidote, he would have died that day.
After all, it hadn’t been him Wen Ruohan had come for.
Their father had been right, it seemed, to have gone to such lengths to hide the fact that his eldest son was a misaligned reincarnation, a man’s soul born into a body that didn’t match. It had been a tricky situation: if Nie Mingjue had been a woman, Qinghe Nie would have honored their word to make a marriage alliance with Qishan Wen, direct heir to direct heir, and if he’d been a man born into a man’s body, there would have been no question of any marriage alliance at all.
But Nie Mingjue was neither, and Qishan Wen didn’t recognize misaligned reincarnations.
Their father had decided to live up to his principles: his son was his son, not his daughter, and therefore the marriage agreement was inapplicable. He could always marry off another daughter, if he had one.
They’d kept it a secret for over a decade – but in the end, Wen Ruohan found out. He felt that he’d been cheated, and he was determined to take what he believed he was owed.
Wen Chao had once told Nie Huaisang that the original plan had been to marry Nie Mingjue to Wen Xu. Nie Mingjue would have the position of first wife, as a sop to Qinghe Nie’s honor, but that was all, and never mind how everyone know how badly Wen Xu treated his women, concubine or official wife alike.
That plan had been ruined when Nie Mingjue, sick with poison and grief and far too young, had nevertheless found the strength to lift up his saber and attack Wen Xu in the entranceway to the Unclean Realm – not only to attack, but to defeat; not only to defeat, but to permanently cripple.
He’d been only moments away from claiming Wen Xu’s head when Wen Ruohan had finally condescended to come to his son’s defense.
That fight hadn’t gone nearly as well.
(The only thing Nie Huaisang remembered from that day was this:
Wen Ruohan standing there with his foot on Nie Mingjue’s chest, pressing him down into the floor with a smile as he said, “You’re very talented. I’ll do you the honor of taking you as my own bride, instead.”
“I’d rather die first,” Nie Mingjue had spat back.
“I’m sure you would, stubborn Nie that you are,” Wen Ruohan had said agreeably, and removed a jar from his waist; it had been the antidote. “But how about your brother? Your sect disciples? Would you rather they died first, too?”)
In the end they’d struck their deal. The Nie sect disciples was not put to death by poison and sword, as originally intended, but was instead absorbed into Qishan Nie’s forces, and Nie Mingjue was not forced to marry as long as he served Wen Ruohan as his weapon.
“I gave up on having principles when I burned the Cloud Recesses,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice flat. “It doesn’t bother me any longer.”
That was a lie, and they both knew it. Nie Mingjue might have traded away his principles for the lives of his family, of his sect, but he’d never given them up, not really – or else the Cloud Recesses wouldn’t have had so much time to empty out their Library Pavilion before it was put to the flame.
(Wen Chao said that Nie Mingjue had been friends with Lan Xichen, once. Sending him to do the job was meant to hurt.)
“And anyway, haven’t I told you to stop talking with Wen Chao?” Nie Mingjue added, and Nie Huaisang can see in the mirror the way his brother’s lips twist in anger. “He always tells you bad things.”
That was true, and Nie Huaisang acknowledged it. Still, Wen Chao wasn’t that bad – he had been, before, when he was still the spoiled oversexed princeling who didn’t think anyone on earth had the right to tell him no, but Nie Mingjue had beaten him black and blue over his womanizing enough times that he’d finally started to shape up in sheer self-defense.
Realizing that his father had lost interest in rescuing him had had quite an impact.
And anyway, it wasn’t like Nie Huaisang had many other friends here, especially not ones that were as useless as he was.
There was Wen Ning, who was nice, but he was an excellent archer and his sister had made him a decent doctor’s assistant, probably so that he’d have a reason not to be stuck in the Sun Palace; he was away more often than not, and Nie Huaisang couldn’t hold it against him.
There was Meng Yao, officially serving as his brother’s deputy; he was slippery as a snake, working his way into Wen Ruohan’s favor through all sorts of horrific inventions of torture, but he was efficient and useful enough to almost make up for it. Nie Huaisang knew better than to fall for his gentle smiles.
Who was there beyond that?
Wen Xu was a raving madman, having never recovered from his defeat at Nie Mingjue’s hands, and the only other person of sufficient rank to speak with Wen Ruohan’s wards was Wen Zhuliu – and Nie Huaisang didn’t like Wen Zhuliu.
Nobody did, except maybe Wen Ruohan.
“Without him telling me things, I wouldn’t know them,” Nie Huaisang said. “Like the fact that serving as Wen Ruohan’s executioner doesn’t excuse you from having to serve him in bed.”
The arms of the chair broke under the strength of Nie Mingjue’s fists, but Nie Huaisang’s hands were still in his hair, and they were unmoved. His brother would never take any action that could hurt a single hair on his head, no matter how angry he was, and they both knew it.
“He told you that?” Nie Mingjue said through gritted teeth.
“He did,” Nie Huaisang said. “You lied to me, da-ge. Maybe only through omission, but…you lied. You let me think that being his weapon would be enough for him.”
“Nothing is ever enough for him,” Nie Mingjue said. “The Cloud Recesses was burned, the Lotus Pier was split open like a rotted peach, Koi Tower is all but suing for terms of surrender – and none of it is enough.”
Nie Huaisang knew.
Oh, how he knew.
He started braiding his brother’s hair again.
They sat there in silence, surrounded by the wood splinters that had once been part of Nie Mingjue’s chair, and there was no sound by the soft whisper of heavy hair being moved, the quiet clink of metal as Nie Huaisang wove in the simple decorations his brother favored.
“Do you want me to marry him?” Nie Mingjue asked after some time had passed. He sounded tired. “You and your clever plans – would it help if I knelt before the entire world and bowed to the Heavens and the Earth with him? If I profaned our father’s spilled blood by letting his murderer greet him as father-in-law?”
“I’m not saying that,” Nie Huaisang said neutrally.
“But it would help. In – whatever it is.”
It would.
Nie Huaisang has hated Wen Ruohan for as long as Nie Mingjue had. Wen Ruohan never paid much attention to him except as Nie Mingjue’s weakness, and even less after he’d discovered that Nie Huaisang had a weak natural talent and a disposition to be lazy and useless no matter what punishments it brought down on his brother’s head.
What was the point in paying serious attention to someone like that?
After all, how much damage could some useless person who could barely cultivate really do? The only thing he’d ever done that was remotely interesting was setting up a thriving business in erotic art – yes, it was a surprise that it was so successful, with customers in Yunmeng, in Gusu, in Lanling, in dozens of small sects across the cultivation world, yes, but…really. What a tawdry business, and all of it for no reason other than to bankroll Nie Huaisang’s habit of buying fans – and those came from all over, too.
From Yunmeng, from Gusu, from Lanling, from dozens of small sects.
Nie Huaisang especially liked the ones that Wei Wuxian, currently stationed in Yiling, would put together for him. They were always so very clever.
“He’d want children, if we married,” Nie Mingjue said. His eyes were closed in the mirror, his forehead wrinkled in pain as he seriously considered the idea of selling his body for a plan he had never permitted himself to know the details of. Nie Huaisang had never hated himself more than in this moment. “You know he’s wanted for years to replace his sons; he’s only refrained from demanding it because he knows I’d detonate my own golden core first.”
“They say that Lan Qiren is thinking of holding lectures again,” Nie Huaisang replied, changing the subject – it was true, of course. Wen Ruohan wanted Nie Mingjue to bear him better sons than the failures he had; he wanted him the way he had him during formal events, hair arranged and face painted like a proper lady in a dress to match, and he wanted him like that all the time. “In Hejian, since the Cloud Recesses is still being rebuilt. I never did manage to pass that course, the last time.”
He didn’t say that it would be a good excuse for explaining Nie Mingjue’s change of heart. His brother knew.
Anyone who was listening – and there was always someone listening – would only think that Nie Huaisang was exhorting his brother for his own selfish purposes.
That’s what this had to sound like.
“Besides, a niece or nephew wouldn’t be so bad,” he added, finishing the final braid. “Though I know you’d hate being pregnant, da-ge – they say too much exercise is bad for a child, damaging. You’d have to stop training.”
Stop fighting, he meant. With Wen Xu dead and all the leaders of the army loyal to Nie Mingjue, Wen Ruohan’s army would disappear much faster than the man would expect.
It’d be all for nothing, though, if they couldn’t get someone to drop the Nightless City’s defenses, build up over the past few years with all the treasures Wen Ruohan had looted away from the other sects. That was something no one could do but the master of the city –
Or its mistress.
“I’ll think about it,” Nie Mingjue said, and that was very nearly a yes.
“I’d like to take Wen Ning with me, he’s nice,” Nie Huaisang said. “Wen Qing, too, since he’s so sickly…do you think Wen Chao would like it, if I convinced him there’d been plenty of pretty girls there?”
Wen Chao hadn’t so much as looked at a girl since Nie Mingjue had executed Wang Lingjiao for having disfigured another woman out of jealousy, but bad reputations were hard to get rid of. Still, it was useful, both now and in the future when Wen Chao took the mantle of Sect Leader in Wen Ruohan’s stead.
He’d be terrible at it, of course, but Wen Qing hadn’t wanted the position, even if she agreed to be making most of the decisions behind the scenes; Wen Ning didn’t want anything to do with them at all, his only wish being to move to Yiling to be a mad scientist at the side of his idolized Wei Wuxian.
Meng Yao had been a tricky one to win over, since Nie Huaisang had no intention of letting him become Sect Leader Jin the way Wen Ruohan had implicitly promised him. But Nie Huaisang had found the key in one of his visits to the Cloud Recesses when he’d seen the way the man looked at Lan Xichen with stars in his eyes. After that it had been easy enough to convince Meng Yao that being Madame Lan would be just as prestigious as being Sect Leader Jin, and much more enjoyable besides.
“If you bring Wen Chao along, Wen Zhuliu will go as well,” Nie Mingjue reminded him. “And Lan Qiren has no warm feelings towards him.”
“Who does?” Nie Huaisang asked airily with a shrug.
He’d already promised Wen Zhuliu to the Jiang sect to do with as they pleased – Jiang Cheng and his vicious bitch of a mother both, the two of them seeking revenge for what he’d done to Jiang Fengmian and Wei Wuxian, the latter of which having been officially banished ever since his golden core was melted.
Really, it was all already set up. They would all meet at Hejian, long the Wen sect’s weak spot, and at the right moment Jin Guangshan would die (Meng Yao had volunteered with a grin), Jin Zixuan take his place, and then all four of the remaining Great Sects would rise in simultaneous rebellion against the Wens.
The only part left to be arranged was this.
He’d been desperately trying to figure out a way to deal with the Nightless City’s defenses before Wen Chao had told him the truth about his brother, and even afterwards he’d spent months trying to find another way.
There wasn’t one.
There was only this.
Nie Huaisang was really a bastard, wasn’t he?
He put his hands on his brother’s shoulders and met his eyes in the mirror.
“I really want to go, da-ge,” he said, his voice intentionally childish. “Won’t you help me?”
Oh my god !!!!! Baxia gently swaying the baby while NMJ takes a nap because newborn babys only sleep when it inconvenient for you!!
Baxia floating in mid-air, feeling extremely smug that the flat of her blade is large enough to hold a small baby. can you do THAT, Suibian and Shaoyue? huh? huh? no, you can’t, because you’re a sword so there
How did NMJ handle carrying the baby after he found out? What were his feelings about carrying a child? When did he decide he was ride or die for this little psuedo-human? I assume he wouldn't have carried her if he didn't want to. Not being able to train must have been hell on this poor sect leader.
NMJ wasn’t happy about finding out he was pregnant, mostly in the “damnit I’d planned to take this secret to my grave and now everyone’s going to know” sort of way, but, whatever, shit happens and then you deal with it, usually badly (the unofficial Nie family motto)
Carrying the child was more of an irritation than anything else - possibly as a result of having grown up with Qinghe’s philosophy of “so you were born in the wrong body sorry kid it be like that sometimes”, he doesn’t suffer too much from dysphoria, so it doesn’t cause mental stress in that fashion. But developing high blood pressure and having to go on bed rest towards the end of the pregnancy was awful. He hates being stuck in one place at a time, even with NHS trying to entertain him.
...possibly especially when NHS is trying to entertain him.
As for deciding to keep her...NMJ never had especially regular periods, especially during highly stressful times - including, you know, the entirety of the Sunshot Campaign in which he was more or less the commander in chief of the Four Great Sects’ war effort - so he legitimately hadn’t noticed the pregnancy until it was fairly late; no matter if he decided to abort or carry the child to term, both options posed a risk to his life.
He decided to keep the child because the Nie family currently consists of just him and NHS, and since NMJ’s high cultivation means he’s likely to die young, he wanted NHS to have some family left when it happened, unfortunate Wen heritage or no, and he didn’t think he was likely to have kids by any other route (especially given that with his position he’d need to find a man willing to marry in). He might have decided otherwise if it was earlier, just because he wouldn’t have wanted to risk the #1 cause of death for women in ancient times leaving NHS on his own so soon, but as it happened, the choice was really about equal and he decided it was worth the risk to have her.
He only actually started loving the child for its own sake a few minutes after Baobei was born, when her first screams of “WTF I don’t like it out here” nearly pierced his eardrums and he had a moment of “oh, she’s like me” which for various reasons hadn’t occurred to him until then.
and a few hours after that, he abruptly went “...shit, I’m a PARENT now” because that ALSO somehow hadn’t occurred to him
So is Wen Ruohan baby da ge's other father, or would you say it's just another one of his torturers? Would it be known that she's descended from the Wen, and does anyone (side eye JGS) ever try to raise an issue of the Nie heir being babysat by the Yiling Laozu?
some sect leader actually asks NMJ that question and NMJ just goes “it’s about even odds, so how the fuck would I know?” and no one ever asks it ever again
NMJ isn’t the sort of person who hides things because he’s ashamed (it’s not like he was counting on being a virgin to improve his marriage prospects), and the math is readily available, so it’s pretty well known. It’s also pretty well known that Baobei has many uncles who will make it clear with their eyes that they will MURDER YOU if you ever even imply that having a bit of Nie blood is a problem
JGS complains about the baby being corrupted by the Yiling Patriarch exactly once, but NMJ is just so legitimately confused by how a baby that can’t even walk could get corrupted that he eventually drops it
“she can’t even lift her own head what are you expecting her to do summon ghosts? not going to lie, breastfeeding would be 10x more interesting if she did”
In the baby da-ge verse, JGY's reaction seems kinda suspiciously strong. What was going on his head when he heard about what happened to Nie Mingue while he was captured by the Wens? Did it have anything to do with growing up with his mom in the brothel or was it to do with some extra plotting he did behind the scenes? Also I love the concept of Nie Mingue just showing up with a baby breastfeeding one day just nonchalant going Elle Woods like "What? Like its hard?" to all the other sect leaders
Given his circumstances growing up, JGY is pretty sensitive about matters like battlefield rape - and while he was willing to let NMJ get tortured if it got him what he wanted (WRH distracted and then dead), he might not have been quite so cavalier about it if he’d known exactly what he was condemning NMJ to, which he would have been able to guess if only he’d known NMJ was AFAB.
Especially given that, like Meng Shi, NMJ decided to keep the kid regardless of how much harder it’s going to make his life.
NMJ is definitely taking the “What? Like it’s hard?” position about this whole thing because it is going to confuse the living daylights out of EVERYONE
Word gets out that NMJ is trans and has no fucks to give about what people think about it and suddenly there's a ton of cultivators trying to join the Nie clan because they're trans or gnc or all sorts of stuff that gets them side-eyed or looked down upon in other sects. The Nie value results and skill more than anything else. Suddenly they have a lot more talented but non-traditional cultivators.
The entirety of Qinghe Nie is so confused. Male, female, trans, gnc...the only question that matters is how good you are with your saber.
